企业经营绩效、媒体关注与环境信息披露

督促企业披露有“含金量”的环境信息,对构建绿色金融体系、助力生态文明建设意义重大。基于我国化工行业上市公司2013-2017年的数据,本文从经营不善的视角探讨企业披露环境信息的动机,将环境信息分为“财务类环境信息”和“非财务类环境信息”两类,分析其披露倾向,并讨论媒体关注对上述披露行为的治理作用。研究发现:企业在经营绩效不佳时提升了环境信息披露水平,媒体关注对此起到正向调节作用。值得注意的是,企业原本倾向于披露非财务类环境信息,但在媒体关注的治理作用下,企业更侧重于披露财务类环境信息。所有权异质性分析发现,相比于非国有企业,国有企业更乐于在经营不善时披露环境信息,特别是非财务类环境信息;媒体关注能强化非国有企业经营不善时披露环境信息的动机,促使其增加财务类环境信息的披露,而对国有企业不存在显著影响。本文研究结论有助于投资者更理性地认识企业环境信息披露行为,并为督促各类企业披露有“含金量”的环境信息提供了思路。

Business Performance,Media Attention and Environmental Information Disclosure

Developing green finance is an important means to promote the construction of ecological civilization.Guiding enterprises actively disclose environmental information with“gold content”,which enables investors to make targeted investments on the basis of accurately identified“green”enterprise,is a key link in the green finance system.However,there is a problem of“be there just to make up the number”in Chinese environmental information disclosure at present,which confuses investors judgments on“green”enterprises and severely restricts the healthy development of the green financial system.The study takes listed companies of chemical industry from 2013 to 2017 as the main research objects,aiming to seek the cause of the problem and explore potential solutions.The conclusions of the study indicates that:(1)Increasing environmental information disclosure,especially non-financial environmental information disclosure,is a strategy for legitimate gains when the enterprise is not performing well.This strategy is an important cause for the problem.(2)Media attention not only promotes enterprises to disclose environmental information due to poor management,but also makes enterprises focus more on the disclosure of financial environmental information.It is an effective way to strengthen the“golden content”of environmental information.(3)Ownership heterogeneity tests show that state-owned enterprises are more willing to disclose non-financial environmental information when their operations are poor,and media attention is more effective in promoting non-state-owned enterprises disclosure of financial environmental information.Based on the above conclusions,the following enlightenment can be drawn:(1)The government,“green”enterprises and investors should work together to curb the incentives for poorly operating enterprises to strategically disclose non-financial environmental information.(2)The news media should enhance the strengths of reporting enterprises environmental behaviors,and focus on the enterprises effectively environmental protection behaviors at the same time.(3)On the one hand,non-state-owned enterprises should actively use the investor relations section of the official website,shareholder meetings,press conferences and other channels to publicize to investors the significance of implementing the concept of green development for enterprise growth;on the other hand,state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises can actively use a variety of new media tools to enhance the timeliness,breadth and effectiveness of environmental protection disclosure.The main contributions of this study are as follows:First,based on the theory of legitimacy,this paper points out that poor operating performance is an important motivation for enterprises to disclose environmental information,which provides a new perspective for market investors to understand the behavior of environmental information disclosure;Second,this article divides the environmental information into two categories:financial environmental information and non-financial environmental information,in order to make the evaluation results reflect the“gold content”of environmental information better;Third,this paper compares the heterogeneity of he impact of media attention on different types of environmental information disclosure.